How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone: A Memoir

I am being paid to be disposable, to sell clothes that are disposable, to sell something I have no right to sell, to be someone I dislike, to be uncomfortable, until I can no longer see my whole self because I also see what they see and give it willingly.

Good stories, like photographs, freeze meaning; they turn memory into memorized lines.

I know I can only be powerful if people are listening, and I must be powerful if I want to survive.

And the ability to disassociate is also what made me successful: Without my own emotion getting in the way, the audience could find room for their own response.

It’s just a job. It’s just sitting, waiting, zoning out, and being a piece of a machine, and sometimes I’m too tired and it’s too big and I’m just one piston.

Even after working for so long, I am often made to feel I do not belong, that none of me is valued except what I cannot control—my youth, my race, my weight, my skin, my symmetry. I am a guest here, stopping by so long as age and trend allow.

Both of them helped me consider that the response to something broken isn’t a big resolution, it’s in the sweeping, baking, planting, building, and caring for the world we need to live in every day.

I wonder if the reason why I’ve been saying I’m going to be president all these years is because I want to be treated like someone who might be president one day.

so I stop and wonder how to be inside an afternoon with no demands, no work, no one else to please.